Volumes & issues:

The Cognitive Grammar analysis of English nominal quantifiers is re-examined in light of recent theoretical developments: the characterization of grammar as the implementation of semantic functions; and the recognition of strata — baseline and levels of elaboration — as a dimension of structural and systemic organization. For relative quantifiers, which pertain to degree of universality, the grounding function is primary. While absolute quantifiers are primarily adjectival, they assume the function of nominal grounding when initial. This elaboration via functional reorganization eliminates the need for a zero grounding element. Functional reorganization is a key factor in the grammaticization of absolute quantifiers from complex quantifying expressions.

This article argues that the relationship between humor and the body is far more complex, and less linear, than typically presumed in theories of humor. First, cognitive linguistic studies suggest that our folk concepts of humor are fundamentally embodied, as well as mostly metaphorical. Second, psychological research demonstrates that people produce and understand stimuli as being humorous via embodied simulation processes in which they imaginatively project themselves into language or some real world event. Finally, the pervasive influence that bodily thoughts and actions have on humorous experiences greatly complicates attempts to empirically study how humor works and to theoretically describe the behavioral antecedents and consequences of humor in everyday life. Proper recognition of the tight link between humor and the body opens up many empirical and theoretical possibilities for future studies in cognitive linguistics and cognitive science.

The metaphor of the body politic is diverse in the history of European political discourse yet it remains unclear why such diachronic variations occurred. Drawing on Zoltán Kövecses’s idea of “the pressure of coherence,” the present paper argues that diachronic reconfigurations of metaphorical discourses occur due to differential contextual experiences; more specifically, metaphorical discourses on the body politic, which consist of mapping between the domain of the POLITICAL COMMUNITY and that of natural BODY, are reconfigured diachronically in accordance with not only the ideological but also the medical context. In order to demonstrate this, the paper examines the texts of three key medieval political thinkers — John of Salisbury, Marsilius of Padua and Nicholas of Cusa — and the medical knowledge that was influential in their respective era. Thus this paper constitutes a contribution to the historical cognitive linguistic study of metaphorical discourse.

The present study examined the co-occurrence of vocal and motor actions, in order to understand the nature of this link in typically developing infants using an event-based approach. Participants included nine infants who were longitudinally studied for 10 months, between 3 and 12 months of age. The infants were observed for four types of vocal behaviours (vegetative, vocalic, syllabic and verbal) and seven types of motor actions (hand, face, leg, head, torso, whole body and gaze) across three developmental time frames (3–5 months, 6–8 months & 9–12 months), and a measure of rate of co-occurrence was calculated. Results indicated that co-occurrence of vocal and motor actions was present from the young age of 3 months, with a possible change in the relationship as they grew older.

All languages of the world provide their speakers with linguistic means to express existential relations, but such means may vary from language to language. For instance, the existential construction in English is usually introduced by the so-called dummy word there whereas such a construction in Mandarin Chinese directly begins with a locative phrase. From the perspective of Cognitive Grammar, we propose that the Mandarin existential construction (MEC) is a reference-point construction. As such, the initial locative phrase (PLOC) serves as the dominion and the reference point (D/R) to make mental contact with the final nominal phrase which indicates the existence of an entity (Existent) in the spatial region singled out by the PLOC. In the process of the conceptualizer’s construing an entity’s existence in a spatial location, it is the location that gets activated and profiled as salient first, and this location subsequently recedes into the background to serve as the reference point to locate an entity as the target which is finally profiled as salient. Therefore, a reference-point relation is formed between the PLOC and the Existent, the former of which functions as the reference point and the latter as the target. Due to this particular cognitive property of MEC, it is also a presentational construction at the discourse level in that it performs a discursive function of introducing new participants into a discourse. This discursive function of MEC plays a vital role in enabling a discourse to unfold smoothly, thus making the discourse into a cohesive and coherent semantic whole. In addition, when a couple of MECs occur together in a discourse successively, a kind of reference-point chain may be developed.

The present paper aims at showing that ‘cognitive reference points’ (CRPs, see Rosch [1975] and Langacker [1999]) have a crucial role in construing the meaning of a significant group of Hungarian folksongs. In line with the dynamic view on construal, according to which conceptualization unfolds through processing time, the paper argues that building up conceptions via CRPs and their larger configurations outline a mental path, representing a metaphorical emotional approach. The development of the physical route as mental route evolves in a gradual transfer from Perceptual space to Non-actual space, where a salient entity has a ‘gate’ function between mental spaces. Some notions such as ‘mental simulation’ (Langacker 1999), ‘abstract motion’ (Matlock 2010), ‘fictive motion’ (Talmy 2000), or ‘subjective motion’ (Langacker 1987; Matsumoto 1996; Brandt 2009) apply to this specific pattern of construal, namely, motion or change experienced by the conceptualizer along his attention path, which manifests here in different forms of subjectivity. The ordering and directionality of CRPs, along with the metaphorical implications of each entity serving as reference points, thus have important semantic relevance and forms an essential component of meaning construal in this lyrical text type.

Metaphor is regarded as a figure of speech in traditional linguistics, but in Cognitive Linguistics (CL), it is “a cognitive phenomenon in which people understand abstract target domains in terms of concrete source domains” (Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 8). In addition to its cognitive basis, metaphor is also culture-dependent (Kövecses 2005). Charteris-Black (2004) stated that metaphor is central to CDA since it deals with forming a coherent view of reality, but it has been largely neglected in mainstream CDA. This study attempts to conduct critical metaphor analysis of cosmetics metaphorical advertising slogans from a cross-cultural perspective by adopting Charteris-Black’s (2004) Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA) framework. Data include 10 English metaphorical advertising slogans and 10 Chinese ones. The findings demonstrate that critical metaphor analytic approach is a useful tool to view advertising discourse through the lens of Cognitive Linguistics within the critical paradigm, and to unveil people’s values, beliefs, and attitudes hidden in these ideology-loaded cosmetics advertising slogans.

The isomorphic relationship between an infinite number of concrete algebraic groups and the existence of a single abstract group that underlies all these concrete groups is one of the most fundamental subjects in Abstract Algebra. Looking at the process of explicit learning from a mathematical perspective, this article suggests that explicit knowledge of a certain concrete structure can be viewed as consciousness of an abstract algebraic structure that underlies that structure. On the other hand, implicit knowledge can be regarded as knowing something without being conscious of the abstract structure that underlies that knowledge. Explicit knowledge enables the learner to know what features are shared by these concrete groups or structures. These shared features are the defining elements of underlying abstract structure. The abstract structure is constructed in the mind by the suppression of irrelevant data. Therefore, it is suggested that while implicit learning is a receiving-oriented mode of learning, explicit learning is a suppression-oriented one. The sub-process of suppression enables the cognitive system to focus on abstract structure and its defining features, making the process of explicit learning deeper.